‘She are; all that!’ replied his mate. ‘Finest gall on the rivers. Too good by sights for any new-chum.’
And so the pair sat and yarned and watched the treacherous water of what was to become the biggest flood since ’64 stealthily eating its way up amongst the long grass of the sandridge, sneaking quietly into little hollows, then pretending to creep back again, then with a rush advancing a miniature wave further than ever. Sat and talked and watched the brown expanse broaden until the tall oaks that bordered the banks were whipping the fierce current with their slender tops, sole mark now to show where lay mid-stream.
[215]
]‘It’s a darned big lump of a fresh!’ quoth Ned doubtfully.
‘It’ll be down afore mornin’,’ replied his mate. ‘And anyhow it can’t do us real bad, seein’ what we’ve got in the loadin’. But there’s no danger ’ere on this ridge.’
So they turned in under their tarpaulins, and never heard how the water hissed at midnight as it crept, little by little, advancing, receding, but always gaining, into their carefully covered-up fire.
. . . . . . . . . .
In the snug sitting-room at Tarnpirr, with lamps burning brightly, and curtains drawn against the lowering dusk, sat Herbert Fortescue and Daisy Barton, their heads pretty close together over a chessboard.
‘I’m going across to the Back Ridge out-station this afternoon,’ had said Mr Barton. ‘I sha’n’t be home before to-morrow; I want to see how Macpherson’s getting on with those weaners. Needn’t bother about the river. It’s only a fresh, or Warrooga would have sent us word.’
Alas for dependence on Warrooga with its absent trooper, and absent-minded operator, who was warned, just after Manager Barton left him, that masses of water were coming down three rivers towards Tarnpirr!
Had he but taken horse and galloped out the few miles, or sent, things might have happened very differently, and this story would never have been written. But as it was—